I'm stepping into the world of punditry today and offering a list of the weirdos who I think will have the greatest impact in IR in 2013. Suggestions and criticisms are welcome!DBM

WEIRDO #5: Silvio Berlusconi

Is Italy ready for the reign of King Silvio IV? The man who once called the Italian Republic "this shitty country" when he was its acting Prime Minster is poised to win next month's election. If he wins, Europe's #1 chauvinist will have to work with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a woman he once called fat.

Where in the world is Hugo?

WEIRDO #4: Hugo Chavez's Cuban Puppet Masters

After winning his third re-election, Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez had to put off his inauguration due to illness. He's laid up in a Cuban hospital and hasn't been seen in weeks. There are fears that he's on life support or under the influence of the Cuban government. Who's in charge?

Pointing the blame upstairs

WEIRDO #3: U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)

This Oklahoman is my dark horse weirdo for 2013. The international community is calling for real action on climate change, which it cannot achieve without U.S. cooperation. The septuagenerian who first campaigned on "God, Guns, and Gays," has maintained that anthropogenic climate change is impossible because only God can change the environment, and he wouldn't do that to us.

до свидания

WERIDO #2: Vladimir PutinLast year, the Russian President dressed up as a giant bird and led a group of Siberian Cranes on their winter migration. He's salvaged shipwrecks, caressed octopi, and swam with dolphins. He's a judo master and likes to take his shirt off for photo ops. What's next for Putin? I hope he joins the cast of Expendables 3, but we'll just have to wait and see in 2013.

He'd rather be playing Sega

TOP WEIRDO TO WATCH IN 2013Kim Jong UnIs anyone else still sort of stunned that this guy is in charge of the DPRK? He only got the job because his older brother was busted trying to visit Tokyo Disneyland with a fake Dominican passport under the name "Fat Bear." Yet, Jong-Un was the SECOND choice. This Supreme Leader-by-Default recently threatened to target the United States with ICBMs and attack the ROK

Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tweeted his angst over a recent U.S. delegation to North Korea. "(Former Gov.) Richardson and (Google CEO Eric ) Schmidt arrive in North Korea today-- Lenin used to call them 'useful idiots.'" The 2000 presidential candidate likened the two, who visited the hermit kingdom with the hopes of starting a dialogue, to the Western dissidents who were brought to the USSR to legitimize the communist regime. This reminded me of one of the stranger "useful idiots" in the history of the DPRK, PFC James Dresnok.

In 1962, Dresnok was on patrol in the DMZ when he had enough with life. He had no family back home and his wife of two years just asked for a divorce. He also was accused of forging documents and was facing a possible court marshal. So, he decided to walk across the minefield and surrender to North Korea.

The DPRK used Dresnok and three other American defectors as propaganda tools over the next three years. According to an interview in Crossing the Line, Dresnok claimed that they never felt welcomed by their hosts, and attempted to defect to the Soviet Union in 1965. They were promptly kicked out of the Soviet embassy and, consequently, taken to a re-education camp by their North Korean minders. Apparently, these idiots weren't as useful as they had thought.

By the 1970s, the Americans came to love (or fake their love for) North Korea. They starred in North Korean films (always playing the bad guy, of course) including one directed by none other than Kim Jong Il. This gave them a bit of notoriety in North Korean society, along with more food rations. (Dresnok says that they ate well during the famines of the 1990s.) Things were so good for the useful idiots that the government even kidnapped (or, introduced, as Dresnok maintains) wives for the four Americans.

Dresnok holds his glock gangsta style

Of the four useful idiots, only Dresnok remains in the DPRK. Two passed on decades ago and Charles Robert Jenkins moved to Japan by way of Indonesia and the United States. The story of Jenkins is an odd one. His wife was kidnapped from Japan but permitted to return after pressure from the Japanese government in the early 2000s. This highly publicized affair, coupled with encouragement from Japan, convinced the DPRK to allow Jenkins to visit with his wife and kids in Indonesia. Of course, Jenkins shouldn't have been trusted, because as soon as he landed he asked for political asylum. To make a long story short, he struck a deal with the US Army and served a thirty day sentence for desertion and now lives in Japan with his wife. Was he a useful idiot and, if so, to whom? Part of me likes to think that this was the longest covert mission ever and that it was Jenkins's plan all along to spend forty years behind enemy lines. On the other hand, listening to Dresnok leads me to believe that these guys were just useless idiots.

This is a couple of years old, but it's a good one. You might have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy it, though.

The Asia Pivot, the broad American effort to shift its foreign policy focus to East Asia and the Pacific, is one of our most sophisticated foreign policy issues today. It entails a comprehensive change in strategy and force posture and, at the same time, the resolution of a lot of smaller and nuanced issues. Perhaps the sheer complexity of the issue overwhelmed Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) during a House Armed Services Committee Hearing in 2010.

Admiral Robert Willard, USN, was testifying about the possible relocation of US Marines from their current station on Okinawa to Guam. There are multiple motivations for moving these troops, including ongoing disagreements with their current Japanese hosts, changes in logistics, and new strategic priorities. When Hank Johnson questioned the Admiral, his comments defied common sense and a rudimentary understanding of 6th grade earth science.

The Representative expressed his concern about the relocation of approximately a combined 8,000 US Marines, staff, and families. "My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize."

Was this a legitimate, but poorly articulated, concern about the ecological impact that military bases have on small islands? Maybe it was an Andy Kaufman-esque put on? Or does Occam's razor apply here-- is the man is just an idiot?

World War II has so many good stories you can't be blamed for thinking the war lasted longer than the current War on Terror. I recently came upon a story I've never heard before while reading about the 1960s British tv show, The Prisoner.

In a nutshell, The Prisoner was a 17 episode show about a mysterious place called The Village where spies who wanted to retire but had too many secrets were placed. As fantastic as this might sound (why not just kill them?), it turns out that the show had a real life inspiration from WWII called Inverlair Lodge, located not far from Fort William in the northern highlands of Scotland.

The lodge is apparently remote enough that the WWII-era spy British spy service, the Special Operations Executive, used it to sequester incompetent spies for the duration of the war. The SOE, which was responsible for training spies for operations against the Nazis, trained both Brits and continental Europeans. During their training period, these spies would learn enough about prospective missions and targets that they could not be let go if they were somehow found to lack the necessary characteristics of a capable spy. Hence, those "incompetent" spies were sent to Inverlair to ride out the rest of the war. In one instance, one man was sent to Inverlair just for being too ugly!

The incompetent spies were not prisoners - they could move about freely. But aside from long walks and visits to the local pub, there probably wasn't much to do. The lodge is for sale, at least it was in 2008, with the claim that Rudolf Hess was kept there for a short time after he parachuted into Britain to negotiate a secret German-British truce, but this has never been confirmed.